Oooh. I missed that, you're right...and that's certainly not typical...ugh. However, breaks at the elbow and shoulder aren't uncommon, as far as I can tell, instead of the shoulder ripping apart. The guy I referred who broke his collar bone had it break on a keylock...I wouldn't've guessed that would happen, but it did.

Note to self: If I ever run a tournament...I won't feed beginners to the lions.

As I recall when this first got posted, it was about the only tournament in the country and was an open skill level tournament.
But yeah, does suck for the beginners. Wonder if it was single elimination.

There aren't enough active competitors around these parts to have a skill based division system. There are barely enough blue belts to fill all the weightclasses in the gi tournaments, and SW is even smaller. The situation has improved vastly in the last two years though. It's not like 18 months ago when my buddy first won a gold medal in his blue belt weight class because there was no one in it, and then moved up a weight class and won the silver medal after being triangled in a minute.

I pointed at him [the panhandler], bringing my rear hand up in a subtle approximation of the double Wu Sau guard that is the default hand position in Wing Chun Kung Fu.

As I recall when this first got posted, it was about the only tournament in the country and was an open skill level tournament.
But yeah, does suck for the beginners. Wonder if it was single elimination.